anakin and ahsoka are good kids! you can’t change my mind

"You are the Chosen One. You have brought balance to this world. Stay on this path and you will do it again… for the galaxy. But beware… your heart…"

because, although it is intended to be a fix-it, anakin is still anakin--his desire to protect is often conflated into a desire for power, because power is the tool that attacks and defends. you cannot save anything if you do not have power. and the dark side offers, above all else, power.

even without palpatine and even without support, anakin’s potential for destruction is... immense

BUT ALSO MAYBE THE TITLE ISN’T ABOUT ANAKIN AT ALL, because anakin tells sai, “i don’t understand why you’re not the chosen one.” from his perspective, it’s sai who’s more impressive! it’s sai who thinks about things like what is the ‘dark side’ and ‘light side’ of the force really? what makes them so different? what makes one so hated and one so beloved? it’s sai who says that to balance something is to make it equal, not to eradicate it. it’s sai who seems like they have an inkling of what ‘the chosen one’ even means

and sai focuses their attention on anakin. he is reachable; he is something that they can affect now, with the resources that they have, but it is still so hard to take a step back and say “i cannot do more than this.” they have knowledge, as vague and patchwork as it is; they can do something with it, can save someone, something, even if they cannot save everyone--but they do not have the power to make others listen. they do not have the power to have the position to make others listen.

I'm now deadass imagining Sai as that friend your parents/teachers think is a good kid but is 85% responsible for all of the trouble you get into

LOL IT’S... AN ACCURATE ANALOGY

anakin talks about sai semi-frequently, sometimes relaying a story and sometimes complaining about sai lecturing him on things he already knows already, jeez, he’s not ten years old anymore, he knows how to hold himself steady in the light side of the force.

what obi-wan understands from these mentions of sai is that sai regularly takes the time to share things with anakin and to help him understand and interact with the force and jedi code in ways that do not seek to smother his natural inclinations. (obi-wan is jedi-raised; he has been taught nearly since birth how to access the force as a jedi. anakin is always full of emotion, though, and he does not easily relinquish those feelings to the force. sai is also jedi-raised, but they seem to have an easier time translating the jedi way into something that anakin can understand and use.)

what obi-wan understands is that sai actually makes anakin think about things, which--while occasionally frustrating--means that anakin is actively learning. and anakin wants to learn so much. obi-wan is predisposed toward liking sai just for this

and then obi-wan actually sees anakin and sai together--probably genuine years after getting anakin as a padawan--and it’s... i mean... they are very much Fellow Teens Having Fun, except their version of fun is “hey, let’s figure out how much we can actually use the force for. hey, let’s figure out the absolute heaviest thing we can pick up with the force. hey, wait, let me make some paper airplanes and figure out how many we can control with the force at once. HEY WAIT LET’S MAKE A BUNCH OF PAPER AIRPLANES AND FIGURE OUT HOW MANY WE CAN HIT MIDAIR WITH OUR SABERS”

@duckish Yes that is EXACTLY it

like - you can pick things up with the force. you can move things around. i read a fic the other day where yoda and anakin do controlled falls that have the appearance of flight, which i genuinely cannot figure out if it's canon or not. so the Obvious thing to do here is to start figuring out how to use the force to affect several items at once

using papercraft in force experiments means that when your concentration or rhythm slips and everything falls, nothing is going to break

the papercraft begins probably because sai's jedi master teaches them how to fold something and then sai finds an origami book and now sai and anakin are making paper airplanes and cranes and learning how to support both of them in the air... and learning, essentially, how to use their saber as a baseball bat, which helps their reflexes and their force-intuition (and, as an unexpected side benefit, it's good practice for releasing feelings into the force, because they laugh a lot but they also get REALLY FRUSTRATED)

Idek. It always felt like one of those flimsy, "oh of course the leading guy is going to get with the leading lady, bc That's How Romance Works (tm)"

I am loving sai and this entire au